


lucid

by dustofwarfare



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Dream!Sex, M/M, Vaguely dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 06:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13497024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustofwarfare/pseuds/dustofwarfare
Summary: The stars are gone, fading back into black as dawn brightens up the sky and Cloud can feel him, the edges of him everywhere in the air like electricity.In which Cloud dreams.(Warning for slight NSFW content and disturbing imagery, slight dub-con but not graphic)





	lucid

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Day 1 prompt "Showing up Unexpectedly" for Sefikura week 2018.

For all that the life he’s lived is fantastic in nature, Cloud’s dreams are relatively mundane.

Sometimes they’re about deliveries he’s forgotten about, and he’s sure there’s some psychological meaning he’s either too obtuse or too tired to suss out. In one dream he was having tea with a Bandersnatch that could somehow speak, and in another he was looking for his luggage after missing a flight on the Tiny Bronco.

And every so often, there are nightmares. In one, it’s him who kills Aerith. In another, Zack is staring hatefully at him high on the cliffs above Midgar, shouting that it’s Cloud’s fault he’s dying, that if Cloud weren’t so _weak_ it wouldn’t have happened, that it should be Cloud bleeding out in the rain.

But most of the time, Cloud doesn’t remember what he dreams. And he’s fine with that. He knows he dreamed a lot on the quest to stop Sephiroth, dreams choked in fear and doubt. Dreams of being himself, of being someone else, of wanting something he was always too shy to name.

Looking back, he’s sure it was something to do with sex. He’d been in his early twenties on that quest, physically, but his mind was still sixteen and confused. He’s not sixteen anymore, nor is he confused; simply resigned to the fact that intimacy for him is hard-won and bloodied, forged in terror and lighthearted moments shared with comrades-in-arms, fellow soldiers in their own strange and desperate army.

Cloud isn’t celibate but he’s aimless in his affections, searching for partners who will understand that he doesn’t want anything longer than a few hours, a night at the most. There was one guy he met in a bar on a delivery to Junon that he spent the night and a little bit of the morning with; that was, sadly enough, the longest sexual relationship he’d ever had and it lasted less than eighteen hours.

When he dreams about sex, it’s usually Zack; his long-ago crush, the first boy who ever made Cloud want to kiss him. Sure, he’d had fantasies about Sephiroth when he was first aware of what fantasies were, but they weren’t the same. Cloud wanted to be like Sephiroth; strong, powerful, important.

Cloud wanted to _touch_ Zack. Wanted to run his hands over his muscled body, press his mouth to Zack’s, feel Zack’s big, swordsman’s hands on his cock. His crush, at the time, had been as painful and lovely as anyone’s crush when they’re sixteen, and he never would have acted on it, ever, even if fate hadn’t trapped them in the path of a madman and a pair of mako tanks.

In reality Cloud has sex with men he meets at bars; in his dreams, it’s usually Zack, or sometimes Vincent, and even – though he felt the immediate need to take a shower, when he woke up – Rufus Shinra, once or twice. Sometimes it’s not anyone he’s ever met, but the difference from these dreamlike encounters and the ones he allows himself in his waking life is that, in his dreams, he knows whoever it is that he’s fucking. They share some history, the man knows his name, knows what scares him, knows the simple pleasures that make Cloud Strife if not happy, then content.

Letting someone touch him, someone who knows him, is a luxury and a torment and a nightmare he’s constantly avoided.

Cloud is on his way back from a delivery to the Western continent. He’s sleeping outside, which he always likes, the stars bright and many above him, the breeze cool but not cold. Fenrir is parked next to his makeshift camp like a sentinel and Cloud falls asleep easily, more than he ever does, and does not expect to dream.

For a moment he doesn’t think he _is_ dreaming. Where before he was ensconced in warm blankets with the fire dying to embers, now he is standing, a sword in his hand, his breath ragged and too-fast. It’s not the sword he made himself, First Tsurugi; a pattern of disconnected blades he forged into one, symbolizing the different parts of himself that finally became a whole.

It’s the sword he tore from the broken corpse of Ultimate Weapon in the dirt and dust of Cosmo Canyon. This is not Zack’s Buster sword, forever a reminder of his promise to his dying best friend. The sword a frightened and enraged young Trooper used to kill a legend with his eyes blinded by tears, choking on the smoke of his burned village.

This is the sword he used to cut Sephiroth down in the Northern Crater, that last battle, when it was the two of them. Sephiroth’s various Jenova-enhanced forms all stripped away, leaving the man himself unadorned with nothing save his wicked blade.

Cloud left this sword in the crater where Sephiroth fell. It seemed appropriate; it came from the Planet’s weapon, and the Planet’s weapon came from the crater.

“Hello, Cloud.”

That voice is unmistakable.

 _Stay where you belong,_ Cloud told him, the last time they’d fought. _In my memories._

His memories, but not his dreams. For all their complicated history of violence and blood and pain, Cloud has never once dreamed of the man standing before him, backlit by the fire that is suddenly no longer just embers.

“What are you doing here?” Cloud asks, warily. By rights the passage of time means the sword in his hand should feel unfamiliar, and yet.

Sephiroth stares at him. He’s dressed like he was in the Northern Crater; devest of coat and pauldrons, clad only in black pants and boots, masamune resting like a faithful companion at his side. “You know I am never far from you, puppet.”

“I’m dreaming,” Cloud says, scowling. He must be. He feels no fear, no rush of adrenaline; not even the irritation at hearing Sephiroth call him a puppet. “And I don’t want to dream about you. Go away.”

He concentrates, concentrates – and wakes up in his bedroll, alone, under the stars. Glancing to his left he sees Tsurugi, and sighs. Just a dream.

***

Cloud is naked, spread out on the blankets and it’s warm, warmer than it should be even if the fire wasn’t banked. He feels hands on him, calloused from years handling a blade. They move down his body with practiced familiarity and Cloud moans; the fingers that wrap around his cock are sure and strong, stroking with the right pressure, the right speed, to make him writhe.

A dream, he knows it’s a dream, but it’s far more welcome than the one that preceded it. He arches up beneath the skillful touches, throat bared to the mouth that that teases at his neck, nipping and sucking, making him shiver. He reaches up, wanting to tangle his fingers in his lover’s hair, and it’s long, long and silky, and Cloud thinks _Vincent_?

There’s something about the way he’s being touched, a cold clinical consideration in the caresses, that makes him understand this is not Vincent. Cloud notices the hair in his fingers is silver, and the man on top of him raises his head and Cloud stares into a familiar jade gaze, sees the knowing smirk on that cruel mouth, and feels cold all the way to his core.

“I don’t want you here,” Cloud says, pulling Sephiroth’s hair, hard, wanting to see pain flash across those beautiful, hateful features. “Stay out of my dreams.”

“No,” Sephiroth murmurs, lowering his head, mouthing again at Cloud’s neck. His kisses feel like ice, his touch a loathsome thing, poison-tipped.

Cloud is so hard he hurts.

“You’re – not real,” Cloud pants, head tossing. “You’re not who I want, I’ve never wanted you –”

“Liar,” Sephiroth coos, silken voice slick and soft against his ear. “You’ve always wanted me. Why else do you chase me to the ends of the world and back, hmm?”

“I’ve killed you. Three times,” Cloud reminds him, hands twisting in Sephiroth’s hair, which now feel like shards of glass between his fingers. He arches up, close, fucking the fist that is so tight, so good, around his cock. “I don’t want you, I hate you, hate you –”

“I know,” Sephiroth says, darkly amused, kissing Cloud’s mouth. “I hate you too, Cloud.”

Dreams have always been the one place Cloud is safe. Be they nightmares, images of the mundane or nonsensical, or even the sweet nothing of dreamlessness….sleep has always been sacred, free from this man’s tainted presence.

“You will never be free of me, Cloud. Send me to death all you want, but remember – in the darkness, what I am, what you have made me…I can follow you wherever you go. _And I will._ ”

Cloud snarls and reaches to his side for the sword; he doesn’t notice or care which one it is. He drives it straight through his rival’s heart, and Sephiroth laughs, delighted, opens his mouth and something black pours forth from it, gushing like a river undammed. Cloud cries out and comes as that black-blood seeps from Sephiroth’s eyes like tears.

Cloud wakes up with a start, his face wet and his hand sticky, and knows there will no longer be safety in dreams. The stars are gone, fading back into black as dawn brightens up the sky and Cloud can _feel_ him, the edges of him everywhere in the air like electricity.

The fire is banked, the embers cold. Cloud eases his left hand out from the blankets, humiliated and ashamed at what he’d done.

His right hand is closed around First Tsurugi’s hilt. His face is wet with tears and he’s afraid to wipe them away, afraid to see his skin turned black. His body is satisfied from the release he hadn’t wanted.

Sex and death and pain and tears, and Cloud knows what it means; that somewhere, his old enemy is rising just like the dawn.  

 

 

 

 


End file.
